As technology advances and computers are becoming ever faster and smaller, there has been an increase in the number of portable computer devices available in the market. These devices range from palm top computers, essentially miniature laptops, to PDAs. As the computing power and memory capabilities of the devices increase, users are demanding access to more powerful software applications.
Programmers attempting to program complex software applications quickly find that traditional visual software development systems are unsuitable for programming applications to run on the myriad of devices available. Specifically, given the multitude of variations of interfaces, screen sizes, and resolutions among the portable computer devices, it can be very difficult for a programmer to ensure that a particular chosen graphical user interface (“GUI”) will appear and work correctly on multiple devices. In addition, the developer is often working in the resolution environment of the desktop computer, making it more difficult for the programmer to visualize how a particular GUI will work on the screen of the portable computer device.
Typically, programmers of portable computer devices alternate between programming on a desktop, and running the software on an emulator of the device, or the actual device, to see if the GUI operates as expected. This can be time consuming and inefficient, especially if a programmer wishes to port the application to a wide variety of portable devices.
What is needed is a real time, what you see is what you get (“WYSIWYG”) visual computing environment that allows programmers to see how a particular application will look on a particular device as they program the application in real time.